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* Segro says consumer habits potentially changed irrevocably
* Annual adjusted pre-tax profit climbs nearly 11%
* Segro declares a final dividend of 15.2 pence/share
(Adds details about e-commerce boom, shares)
By Aby Jose Koilparambil
Feb 19 (Reuters) - UK real estate investment trust Segro
said on Friday it expects a boom in online
shopping to be sustained even after the COVID-19 pandemic as the
warehousing specialist posted an 11% jump in annual profit.
Warehousing specialists globally benefited from massive
shipments of products bought online during the pandemic,
outperforming other commercial real estate companies including
mall operators and office space providers, as people
increasingly took to remote working and shopped online.
"We believe there has been a step-change in consumer
behaviour," said Segro Chief Executive David Sleath, adding that
its customers were already preparing to adapt businesses to
respond to higher-than-expected levels of online sales.
Increased e-commerce penetration in Europe as retailers
adapt their supply chains and seek more warehouse space to set
up larger centrally-located fulfilment centres and smaller urban
distribution centres has been benefiting Segro.
"Some of the factors that were considered as barriers to
increased levels of online sales penetration, for example
concerns about the quality of food bought online and reluctance
to share financial information over the internet, have been
overcome and habits have potentially changed irrevocably," said
Sleath.
The FTSE 100 firm posted an adjusted pre-tax profit for the
year ending Dec. 31, 2020 of 296.5 million pounds ($414 million)
and declared a final dividend of 15.2 pence per share, up from a
14.4 pence payment a year earlier.
Shares in the company, which made a secondary listing in
Paris in 2020, climbed as much as 1.5% on the London Stock
Exchange in early trade.
The 101-year-old REIT, which manages big-box and urban
warehouses among other assets, logged like-for-like net rental
income growth of 2.1%, while adjusted net asset value per share
rose 16.3% to 814 pence.
Segro said 1.2 million square metres of projects are under
construction or in advanced pre-let talks equating to 81 million
pounds of potential rent.
($1 = 0.7160 pounds)
(Reporting by Aby Jose Koilparambil in Bengaluru;
Editing by Vinay Dwivedi and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
